Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

It has been around one year when I sat in front of this computer and wrote a letter of the year that has just passed. Time goes by fast when you are having a good time, haha. This time I am writing this in a different continent, sitting in a library in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

The year started back home in Slovenia celebrating my new years at home with my family falling asleep in front of a TV, waking up 5min before the New Year, toasting at midnight and of course falling asleep 5min later. Until now I didn’t even realize how great those memories really are! The next month I was traveling around Europe with a Chinese friend of mine, and together we also celebrated Chinese New Year in Salzburg, Austria. Two days later I boarded a plane to Chicago and my new life has begun. It seems pretty silly to say that, but for me, this decision was something like a dream, realizing a dream since an early age. I knew back then I would be making this step one day!

I have always seen myself as multiple personalities all rolled into one. In France I was all about partying and getting to know everyone and having a crazy experience, in China, I was an English teacher that fell in love with the culture and took a deep look into my inner self. Now here in the USA is where I start making my dreams come true. What is that one might ask? Family, kids & working towards creating a location-independent job, and most importantly combining all these different personalities into one.

I arrived at the states in the middle of February and luckily enough I had a great Aunt who offered to have me stay at her place until I got everything in order. Luckily it didn’t take a long time until I found a good first job at Marianna Industries as a Quality Control Chemist. Some of you might not know that I have a bachelor in Chemistry and that my master’s in Business Science was only for myself and not my career (I don’t like that word). Soon enough I met someone special and we moved in together (my aunt driving me crazy was a driving force as well). Everything just came together.

 

My job is actually interesting and I love working there. Marianna Industries is a beauty supply company and they make shampoos, conditioners, hair colors, etc. My job is to guide the batcher through the process of making the products, and once they finish I have to make sure everything is as it’s supposed to be. Usually, nothing is as it is meant to be and I run around the manufacturing facility collecting samples, testing them, adjusting the products until they are in specifications. It’s a crazy job and outgoing. I mostly love it because sometimes I have to add 100’s of pounds of material to the product and carry it around (like a gym), you have to multitask, and I rock at it! After three months working there, I was already outperforming everyone in the lab! My manager noticed really quickly and actually offered me a pay raise. This is where it goes downhill… Unfortunately, I have a crazy lead Chemist who is super stressed about everything, is rarely in a good mood and makes everyone in the lab down. I still haven’t gotten a raise and the promised promotion even if my performance has been the best in the lab for the last 6 months. Due to this and other small things I decided to actually start looking for a new job and in the next Christmas letter I will be working somewhere else.

So, what do I do after work? I have been really focusing on my goals and work towards finding and creating a location-independent job. I have been working on trading for the last 8 months since I got my job. At this time, I have been on it for 2-3h everyday trying to understand more and reading books like crazy. I have made a huge improvement from where I started. Having read 10 books, around 2500 pages of material, and looking into the screen trying to understand what I was reading I have come to the level where I could easily comprehend every book on the trading topic. I have been paper trading (with fictional money) for the last 4 months back testing different strategies and coming up with better ideas while I figure out what works for me. There is still a long process until I can actually live from this, but what matters most to me is that I find it interesting and I like what I am doing!

This has left little time to socialize and make new friends, but honestly I am having some problem finding normal people :P. Since moving here I have really changed my opinion about Americans, unfortunately in a negative direction. A friend of mine told me:” Why did you move to America? For someone who loves different cultures and diversity, you chose Americans that have no culture or diversity”. How could that be, Americans come from every end of the world!! Well, it seems that my friend was right. Most people here have very rich cultural background but it seems that most of them just forget about it and don’t even care about it. I have found myself surrounded with people that copy their personality from everyone else and they constantly and blindly believe all the news, live under constant fear of the worst and see the world in $$$ and materialism. Sometimes I feel I live in scary movie where all my friends and coworkers’ lives revolve around their work, playing computer games and drinking! I really feel like most people here have no personalities and just live their lives like others do, so that they could fit in.  I can’t say that I have found a friend that I could really have crazy fun, fantastic time together, but in reality, I have also been busy with my goals.

I don’t have much to write, and I think two pages is more than enough! I will end this letter with a few goals I would like to achieve in the following year (I book I read says that when you put your goals out to the world you will have a higher motivation of doing it!).

1.      Find a new job that I like (Just got an offer 2h ago, DONE!) 
2. ·  Travel to at least 4 different places I want to see (Alaska, Washington state, and two closer to Nebraska). Don’t have anything foreign planned next year.
3. ·  Work harder on trading and find a back-tested strategy to enter the markets.
4. ·  Read at least 6 books
5. ·   Do something big…

This is only the main point for this year, but my real goals are a whole page long. Maybe I will share it some other time!

XOXO, Nick <3